Friday, September 09, 2005

Biolabs in New Orleans

Defense Tech makes a good point:

In and around the Big Easy are a number of Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) labs, meant to handle some of the nastier biological agents out there -- stuff like anthrax, plague, and genetically-engineering mousepox. Louisiana State University’s Medical School and the State of Louisiana both ran BSL-3s within the city. Tulane kept 5,000 monkeys for biodefense studies in its "National Primate Research Center," located in nearby Covington.
MemoryBlog has more:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a "Select Agents Program" for any facility that handles highly dangerous germs, including Ebola, Marburg, ricin, avian flu, and anthrax. At the top of their website is the following notice:
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Announcement for Entities Impacted by Hurricane Katrina

Entities that are registered with the Select Agent Program who have been impacted by Hurricane Katrina may contact the CDC Select Agent Program for guidance on actions that should be taken to transfer Select Agents to another registered entity or report the theft, loss, or release of select agents that might have occurred due to storm damage.
Given BushCo's astronomical biodefense spending and avid siting of new labs, it'll be interesting to see how well these facilities withstood Katrina, and how well the people in charge of them performed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If indeed we find out. Good catch. Hope you get the chance / resources to update this story.